And now the sight of his house reminded him of her, too. He motored up the drive and the mansion loomed before him, dark and vacant. Deserted. The ache in his gut began to throb. She’d been starry-eyed and passionate over this place. She would have had lights, and wreaths, and candles in every window.
He unlocked the door, walked in, switched on the entrance-hall light. The massive emptiness of the house bore down on him. A shell of a house, it seemed. And no amount of expensive items or furnishings would ever make a difference. He saw no beauty in its architectural details; gleaned no pleasure from its history, or satisfaction from its worth. He couldn’t recapture the sense of home.
He’d never think of it as anything other than “the place he most wanted her to be.”
He would have to keep busy to make it through this night. And the next week. The rest of his life...
He damn sure couldn’t distract himself with a swim. Going anywhere near the pool would be masochistic. He could hardly bear standing here in the entrance hall, where he’d swept her into his arms and carried her up to his bed. He had no desire to gravitate toward the kitchen where that silly gallon of ice cream and jar of pickles would mock him. He couldn’t think of a single room that wouldn’t smother him with memories.
He settled for leafing through his mail. He let out an ironic laugh at the sight of a neatly addressed package. The return address read, Laura Merritt Design Associates. There was no escaping her. He took the package to the only room with chairs—his bedroom. His bedroom, for God’s sake. Sensory images of their lovemaking nearly forced him out of the door.
He had to face up to her absence, though. Weather the worst of the storm. Hadn’t he survived this same trauma when he’d left her fifteen years ago? Hadn’t he eventually learned how to breathe again, how to function again, without dying a little each moment?
Only by burying the purest, finest part of himself for fifteen years.
He avoided his bed and sat in an armchair to open the package she’d sent him. Not too surprisingly, he found her plans for the house. Sketches, samples, photos and a computer disk. He wasn’t in the mood to look at anything to do with the house, but he hungered for communication with her; for any kind of connection.
He slowly perused each photo and sketch, then inserted the disk into his laptop computer. Illustrations lit the screen of how each finished room would look.
A sense of awe overtook him. She’d done exactly as he’d hoped. Even gazing at the scenes on a computer screen didn’t stop the magic from happening. Rooms he’d never spent much time in beckoned with new appeal. Corners he’d barely noticed suddenly caught his eye. Colors soothed. Intrigued. Provoked a whimsical longing...
But then specific details drew his attention and evoked a very different response. A particular Oriental carpet...a wide, wing-backed chair...an antique armoire...a unique style of draperies...artwork from his favorite masters.
A prickling sensation crept up the back of his neck. He hadn’t made any of these selections for Laura. Yet here they were, the very things he’d personally chosen last July for the other decorator—the only things he’d personally chosen out of the household of furnishings he’d ended up buying. He had these items, or ones strikingly similar, stored carefully in a warehouse.
How had Laura known so specifically what would appeal to him? How had she woven these things so seamlessly with her own ideas, creating a mood and theme all her own? Everywhere he looked in these renderings, he saw her. And him. Together.
He pulled the disk out of the computer and shoved it along with the photos and samples into a dresser drawer. He couldn’t think about the house right now, or her vision for it, or how damn much he wanted her here. She wasn’t his. She never would be. He had to find a way to live despite those facts.
The phone rang. He answered it, ill-tempered but grateful for any distraction.
“Cort? Fletcher. Had a question about the contract you sent me.”
Cort listened to the question, which proved to be an intelligent, straightforward one. He answered without hesitation. He’d been impressed with the proposal Fletcher had submitted and with his professionalism throughout their discussions. Cort knew that maintaining the businesslike demeanor couldn’t be easy for him, considering Fletcher believed that Laura was in love with Cort
Another shaft of pain sliced through him. Fletcher had been wrong about that.
“Uh, by the way, Cort.” Fletcher cleared his throat. “About Laura.”
He tensed at the mention of her name. He hadn’t expected Fletcher to bring up the subject, an understandably delicate one between them. They’d both wanted her. And she had shut them both out of her heart. He clutched the phone harder. “What about her?”
“Has she talked to you lately?”
Cort frowned. Was he rubbing in the fact that she’d left him? No. The guy cared more about the two-hundred-thousand-dollar investment he was about to make than that “What do you mean, ‘talked to me’? About what?”
“Anything. The way she’s feeling, I guess. I know she talks to Steffie and Tamika...or at least, she used to. She used to open up to me, too, but that was before, uh...well, you know.” He hesitated, and Cort wanted to reach through the phone line and shake the words out of the guy. “There might not be anything to worry about.”
“But you think there is?” Cort prompted, his impatience and concern growing.
“Hell, I don’t know,” Fletcher muttered. “She looks okay. She’s been acting her usual cheerful self, and she’s got Tamika and Steffie convinced she’s fine. But...”
“But what?” Cort bit out, the very softness of his voice a threat.
“She hasn’t put up any Christmas decorations.”
Cort held the phone in stunned silence.
“B.J. went to her house with some photos of furniture and noticed she didn’t have a tree. It’s already December twelfth. Laura usually has a tree up on the first. Anyway, B.J. and I took a tree to her house...and she didn’t put the first ornament on it. Not even those strings of popcorn.”
Cort frowned. Squinted. Struggled to make some kind of sense out of it. Not even the popcorn?
″Well,” Fletcher concluded, sounding somewhat embarrassed, “just thought maybe you should know.”
“Yeah,” Cort agreed, pondering the enigma with escalating concern. “Thanks.”
Something had to be wrong. Drastically wrong. Was she depressed? If so, why? Was she ill? If so, with what? Was she simply too busy? No. If Laura were the leader of the free world, she’d find time to string popcorn around her Christmas tree.
Cort’s heart tripped. His breath caught.
Was she...pregnant?
SNOW HAD BEGUN to fall in Memphis early that Tuesday morning, lightly dusting the parking lot surrounding her interior-design shop. Laura stared out the side window near her desk at the hypnotic swirl of lacy flakes.
She was functioning in a state of shock. Every beat of her heart echoed the news: pregnant. Pregnant! The circle had turned red on her test kit, less than an hour ago. Not just an iffy pink, but a sure, vibrant red. And though she’d tried to prepare herself for that possibility, she felt dazed and awed and overwhelmed. She hadn’t told anyone yet. She barely believed it herself.
She had a baby growing inside of her! Cort’s baby. Her baby. Sweet, keen joy coursed through her, followed closely by an ache. A familiar ache—the gnawing at her heart that had only grown worse every day since she’d left Cort.
She would have to call him, as soon as she had the positive result confirmed by a doctor. How would he take the news? Would he be happy, or disappointed? He’d come so close to being free of her. Would he see it that way? He’d said he wanted a baby. He’d deliberately set out to make her pregnant. But he’d done it as a favor to her, out of a sense of guilt and responsibility. She didn’t want that from him. She didn’t want that for her baby.
She closed her eyes with a sudden surge of yearning. If only he loved her!
&
nbsp; Struggling to master her emotions, she forced her attention back to her work and copied catalog numbers onto an order form. Miriam, the posh yet motherly designer who had worked with Laura for years, advised a customer about upholstery selections. Janet, a quiet, shy young woman with the soul of a true artiste, sketched intently at the worktable.
“Laura,” called Miriam from the front of the shop, “someone’s here to see you.”
Surprised, because most of her customers contacted her by phone and friends rarely dropped by the shop, Laura glanced up from her work.
Her heart flipped over and landed with a thud.
Cort.
She stared in shaken disbelief. She felt as if her secret news and tortured yearning had somehow joined forces to conjure him from thin air. Tall and broad-shouldered, his jet hair glinting with snowflakes, he stood with his hands in the pockets of a long, black cashmere overcoat. The crisp, white collar of a dress shirt contrasted with the swarthy bronze of his strong throat and jaw. His vivid blue-eyed gaze locked with hers.
Her pulse clamored. What was he doing here? Why had he come?
She rose slowly from behind her desk. She couldn’t utter a single word of greeting. He’s the father of my baby. Would she be forced to give him the news in person? She wasn’t sure she could handle that What emotion would she see in his eyes, if any?
She turned away from his potent gaze, her face warm, her pulse pounding. “Miriam, this is Cort Dimitri from Atlanta. You’ll probably recognize his name from the file I gave you. Cort, Miriam Brenner. And this is Janet Ingram,” she belatedly added as Janet gaped at Cort from another desk, looking dazed and smitten.
He murmured a greeting to both women, a groove deepening beside his mouth, although he had yet to smile. Laura was grateful that he hadn’t. Her knees were weak enough as it was.
“Mr. Dimitri,” Miriam welcomed with a suave smile, “how nice to meet you.” She offered her hand and he took it. An intrinsically feminine glow lit her gently lined face. ”I’ve fallen in love with your house from the photos. I′ll be overseeing the project from this point on, so I’m the one to answer any questions you might have.”
Laura had almost forgotten her instructions for Miriam to handle all correspondence with him. Maybe she could keep him occupied while Laura slipped out...and never came back....
“I’ll keep that in mind, Miriam.” His low, smooth voice reached inside Laura like a caress. “But I’m not here about the house. I’ve come to see Ms. Merritt.” His gaze meandered from Miriam to her. “It’s personal.”
Warmth rushed to her head, making her feel slightly disoriented. A subtle vitality pulsed in the room. His virile presence electrified the very air she breathed.
Laura dreaded being alone with him. She’d longed for him too much. She wanted to feel his arms around her, his mouth on her. He didn’t love her, and the heartbreak was so hard to live with. And now they’d have a child to raise. “I’m afraid I’m too busy to leave the shop. Maybe we can meet later.” Her pulse raced. She needed time to collect herself...fortify her defenses....
“Come with me, Laura.” It was a soft, gruff request. A command.
She longed to go. And feared the same.
“I’ll mind the store,” Janet piped up in her shy, quiet way. “You just go ahead.”
“Go,” urged Miriam. “Be sure to bundle up, hon.” Before Laura could invent a plausible reason not to go, Miriam had helped her into her coat as Janet looped the strap of her purse over her arm.
And Cort watched her, only her, with a smoky intensity she knew only too well.
As if in a dream, she moved toward him. He opened the door for her and ushered her out with a light pressure at the small of her back, barely a touch, but she felt the heat of his hand through the thick wool of her coat. And then they were outside, walking toward a gleaming silver Mercedes sedan.
The bracing winter air rushed against her heated face and lifted tendrils of her hair, but she still felt overly warm. Tell him. Tell him. She couldn’t! She had to get the pregnancy confirmed by a doctor first, she rationalized. The circle was red, not pink, her conscience argued. There was no doubt about the positive result.
But she was so afraid of what she would see or not see in his gaze. “Why are you here, Cort?”
He stopped beside the car, his expression brooding. “You turned my file over to someone else? Why? To avoid me?”
“No! I just...well...” she couldn’t escape his probing gaze “...yes.”
A muscle moved in his jaw. “Don’t do that, Laura. Don’t ever do that.”
Her heart thudded. She had to force the conversation into safer channels. “Have you looked at my plans for your house?”
“Yes.”
“Did you...?”
“Let’s go somewhere private to talk. Your house. Where is it?”
She hesitated only a moment. She couldn’t deny him the chance to speak with her alone. He was the father of her baby; he had rights. Inalienable rights. Like, the right to know he was the father of her baby! And they had many serious issues to discuss. Like...custody arrangements. Her heart contracted painfully. “My house is right there.” She nodded toward the quaint side street with snowy sidewalks, small lawns, tall bare oak trees and old-fashioned houses with covered front porches. “The second house on the right.”
He held out his hand to her. She hesitated to take it. She wanted to touch him in the worst way. But then she’d have to let him go. A frown gathered again in his eyes, and she reluctantly slipped her hand into his. He wove his long, dark fingers through hers, his palm hard and warm against her own, and pulled her deliberately close to him. Her heart pounded in her throat as they walked through the light dusting of snow to her house.
She’d been so lost. His touch, his nearness, his strength felt like a safe, warm harbor, if only a temporary one.
He halted on the walkway that led to her porch and peered at her house. She glanced at him, wondering why he was looking. She saw nothing out of the ordinary about the small, white, red-roofed bungalow.
“This is the right house,” she assured him, thinking that maybe he doubted it.
He slanted her an unreadable glance. She climbed the porch steps and unlocked the door. He followed her inside and surveyed the small, neat living room with a bewildering frown. His gaze then lighted on the unadorned fir tree in the corner. “I wouldn’t have believed it,” he murmured, “if I hadn’t seen it for myself.” He turned his gaze to her. “Why haven’t you decorated for Christmas?”
She blinked, taken aback. She’d never known Cort Dimitri to acknowledge the existence of holiday decorations, let alone look for them. “I...I haven’t had time. I’ve been busy.”
“Busy?” He unbuttoned his long, heavy cashmere coat and draped it over an armchair. “I know you better than that.” He then unfastened the buttons of her coat. “I don’t care how busy you were. By now you should have transformed this entire city block into the North Pole. What happened?”
She averted her face, unable to move away because of his hold on her coat. Incredible how his questions over a relatively frivolous concern provoked the urge to smile and to cry at the very same time. “I guess I haven’t been in the mood.”
He slipped the coat off of her, tossed it onto the chair and tipped her face up to his. “What mood have you been in?”
Dangerous, to expose herself this way to his probing gaze. “Stressed,” she whispered. “Because of the...uncertainty of...of everything.” The truth. Unarguably the truth. But not all of it. Not by a long shot.
“You never handled stress this way before. If anything, it used to send you into a decorating frenzy.” The mild humor in his tone contrasted with the intensity of his stare. “Have you been feeling...down?”
She bit her bottom lip to suppress a ridiculous quiver. She didn’t have to answer him, but his concern and compassion were wearing down her already weakened defenses. “A little, maybe. Nothing to worry about, though.” I’ve mi
ssed you! Nothing seems important without you. And she realized that a great deal of her fear had to do with that. How could she make her baby a happy home when she anguished so deeply over Cort? Would that ever change?
“I brought you something.” He reached down for his coat, slid his hand into one of the pockets and brought out a flat, slim, red package wrapped in cellophane.
She stared at it as he placed the item in her hands. A lump swelled in her throat. “Microwave popcorn.” Her vision wavered, and she choked back unshed tears, overcome by a sudden urge to hurtle herself into his arms. She sat blindly down onto the sofa. “To string around my tree.”
He sat down beside her. “If you want to pop it, I’ll, uh, you know...help string it.”
And that, silly though it was, undid her. He was offering to string her popcorn! He hated to string popcorn. She’d had to badger him into it at the Hays Street house. A sob rose in her throat and she made a move to launch from the sofa.
He caught her by the shoulders. “Laura?” His dark face swam before her in patent concern.
Hot tears welled in her eyes. She buried her face in her hands and gave in to them.
He pulled her firmly into his embrace, running his hand up and down her back, sending tingling trails of heat through the silk of her blouse. “What’s wrong?” he whispered against her hair. “Why are you crying? It’s not something like that silly scarf again, is it?”
That made her laugh...which only made her cry harder. Why was she so emotional with him? Sure, she loved him. Sure, she couldn’t have him, and he’d break her heart for the rest of her life, and she’d have to play the role of his ex-wife, but was that any reason to cry?
″I′m sorry,” she croaked, pulling herself together with an effort and glancing at him apologetically. “I...I just haven’t been feeling too well lately. And I’m t-tired. And I did try to string the popcorn last night, but I burned it. And the smell—” She shuddered, and her hand went to her stomach. “I just can’t make popcorn right now. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but—” The look in his eyes stopped her.
The Daddy Decision Page 19
